I have turned myself into a bit of a gig whore and you don’t whore yourself out without catching the odd dose of bad gig syndrome. I answered an ad on the midlands comedy forum to MC a band night in Birmingham breaking it up with comedy, I should have seen the warning signs as when I applied I told the organiser I did not want to be the MC as I did not feel I had the experience but instead I would do one of the comedy spots? His response was overly enthusiastic and encouraged me to MC so I agreed not sensing his inexperience no doubt due to my own.
I visualised the gig and in fairness was not a million miles off, I expected a lot of leather clad long haired black clothed people with a friendly approach which is more or less what I got however I also visualised there being about 100 people there and being a Friday night gig I was exited about that element. When I arrived after a fairly traffic free 2 and a half hour drive the venue looked exactly as I imagined, the only people there were the event organiser who was clearly new to this, he was 20 and his 17yr old sister was there helping, the 1st thing he said was that there had been 2 drop outs and could I help? Thankfully I could with both Janie Huxx and Callum Scott answering a tweet/face book message however while I was sorting that it became clear there were going to be few audience members as one of the bands who dropped out had an entourage that made for 95% of the crowd that therefore would not be coming, with that in mind talk of cancelling arose but I had travelled a long way and the drummer who they were also waiting for turned up so it was on and just Callum an myself would do the comedy as it was not worth Janie travelling (she dodged a bullet). The gig was supposed to start at 8 but there were only 4 people in so we waited til half past which was totally worth it as that number jumped to 6!!!
So I began, talking to 6 people with a microphone in my hand did kind of make me feel like I was one of those supermarket knobs trying to sell a new type of sensitive teeth mouthwash and only a few old ladies who were just being polite were listening, but I cracked on, I attempted some material but it just fell flat so I chatted to the 6 guys who were at least being polite (the bands were all sat in the room too but not listening in favour of having their own conversation. I didn’t mind that there was not too much interest but it seems like a lot of them knew nothing of why there was a comedian of sorts and were very un aware of the rules of comedy, also the sound set up was awkward for comedy with one of the monitors offering feedback that seemingly only I could here, very distracting for comedy pauses. But with all those small issues (character building) I just continued talking crap at my 6 spectators when I saw a brilliant sight… Callum who had heard of this last minute jumped on a train and got here pronto had arrived…. I gave him no time to settle!!! He was on. The good thing for Callum was that the bands stopped chatting to listen to the proper comedian and it helped as he got laughter from a difficult crowd. I had only given Callum 8 mins of the 15 he was supposed to have due to the several changes in line up but decided as he had no idea how long he had to allow him to do 12 before signalling time, they weren’t happy with me for this but by now I thought fuck it.
Callums set was fantastic, some new stuff I had not seen and although he was a tiny bit rusty it did not show at all he looked in great form, he is light years ahead of me in terms of writing and ability and much younger… I must kill him!! But then there are a lot of acts who are better and younger and I don’t have enough patio space to dispose of them all… anyway back to the night. There were a couple of bands who played and as time had run over I didn’t do my MC bit in-between… thankfully. I had however intended to use my last 5 mins to practice my set although what happened was the band went on behind me and were supposed to wait for my intro and 5 to finish… they didn’t! while I was talking they were strumming and although I twice hinted politely and then yelled shut the fuck up at them it was clear they had no intentions of waiting for comedy to finish so I just got off there and finished, so I had done 25 mins on stage with barely any of it material and no one listening really and the £20 expenses I was promised not paid as they had no money!! Gig whoring is not always a good idea and from now on I will choose gigs more carefully
My own gig at the george next
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